Marty Baron: Why Bezos Is Debasing the Post & Bending Both Knees to Trump

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Audacy | Puck

News, Politics

4.8 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John is joined by Marty Baron to discuss the changes being wrought by Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, where Baron served as executive editor from 2013 to 2021, and how the Fourth Estate is faring in the Trump 2.0 era. Baron explains his reaction (disgust, shock, fury) to Bezos's recent ban on opinions at odds with his own from the Post's op-ed pages; why that move and others by the paper's owner since Trump's reelection can only be interpreted as acts of obeisance; and how those actions undermine the Post’s credibility. Baron also argues that Team Trump’s decision to take control of the White House press pool, handpicking which reporters are granted close access to the president, is part of a broader effort—familiar from autocratic regimes around the world—to undermine and eventually eliminate the free and independent press in America. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:36.7	Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Heilman, a puck and
0:40.7	Odyssey joint featuring lively, in-depth conversations with the people who roam the corridors
0:45.0	of power and influence in America, leaving the warp and weft of our politics and culture.
0:52.0	Last week, the media world was rocked, and not for the first time recently, by
0:56.9	headlines emanating not just from, but about.
1:00.3	One of journalism's most long-reveered, but more recently controversy-plagued outlets,
1:05.7	The Washington Post, when the post owner Jeff Bezos announced that forthwith the op-ed pages of that paper would be, well, changing.
1:15.8	Quote, we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets, Bezos said.
1:24.0	Quote, we'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
1:32.8	The reaction to Bezos's announcement in many quarters, including inside the post itself, was shock, dismay, outrage, and fear.
1:41.9	Fear about the future of a storied iconic institution that has long had a
1:46.7	lively and disputatious set of op-ed pages featuring all kinds of views from across the
1:52.4	spectrum and fear more broadly about the future of the fourth estate itself in the Trump 2.0 era.
2:00.2	Fear that what we're seeing is the magification of the
2:03.5	Washington Post, that Bezos, having first killed a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris last
2:08.9	October, and then traveled to Mara Lago to see Donald Trump, and then appeared on the dais
2:15.8	at Trump's inauguration, and then written a huge, huge
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